Posted on 04/17/2013 4:32:06 PM PDT by Kartographer
Imagine this:
Last thing that you remember is that you were standing with few of your friends in street, now you are laying on ground and looking around you and there is blood running next to your leg, there is something in your throat and it suffocates you, you are trying to remove it with your fingers but nothing comes out, you are trying to swallow it but it is of no help, you are trying to scream but nothing comes out of your mouth. And thing that scare you most is that you notice blood on your pants in groin region, and you think that all future fun is gone.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfschool.com ...
Sometimes listening to victim is gonna be only thing that you gonna be able to do. You can not "treat“ victim with listening only, but trust me to man who is in pain, great fear and uncertainty is he going to survive to have someone beside him makes a great difference. Maybe you are gonna find yourself in situation that man is dying, man who is total stranger to you, but he is gonna have only you for comfort.
It's the basic difference between us and them they can kill, wound and maim a stranger and not feel a thing and we can not look upon them and not wish to help them, even if all we can do for them is to make sure that they do not die alone.
Preppers’ PING!!
Learn to recognize “battle sign” injury.
Sorry, should be Battle’s Sign injury. Darned autocorrect.
I set off a landmine with a bulldozer in Vietnam. My face felt like hamburger from the debris and the blast. I could not hear. I must have closed my eyes because there was nothing in my eyes and I was not wearing any sort of eye protection. My stomach started churning. I felt real woozy. I was starting to go into shock. My ear drums were almost broken.
When giving first aid around an explosion do a through check. Breathing and bleeding would probably be first. One guy pulled off his Tee shirt to offer first aid. Do the emergency things first. Hopefully there will be a lot of help soon.
I would approach a patient and immediately look at their left side, specifically was their left femoral artery gushing blood? Your blood leaves the heart on the left side and that is a strong surge of blood with every heart beat. The femoral artery is strong in the thigh of the left leg. If the leg has been ripped off or part of the leg is there but the artery has been breached, the patient is going to bleed out in a very few minutes.
If the patient isn't breathing and there is no pulse, you need to do CPR but that isn't going to help if the patient is bleeding to death out that artery. In a case like that, two people need to treat that patient quickly - one dealing with the artery and the other doing CPR. The prognosis of that patient is not good but it is possible the patient might live if everything goes well and the heart gets started again.
If the patient is breathing, that is a good thing, deal with the artery immediately.
If the left leg is still there but the artery is cut, there is a new bandage that will stop the artery flow or lessen it enough to get the person to the hospital before he/she bleeds out. It's an H&H High pressure bandage along with H&H hard packed gauze. This new bandage hasn't been around long and I was so impressed something could be done to stop arterial blood flow, I got two of them along with two of the hard packed gauze.
Bleeding out was the major reason to cause people to die in the Boston blast. The best thing going there was the medical tent that already had intravenous fluids there.
I saw a picture of a dead woman there - she had to be dead because both legs were gone at the point they would have attached to the body. She would have bled to death quickly. In that film, I saw a medical person reach over to her neck to take a pulse. I'm sure she already knew this young woman was dead.
The other one I saw was a young man with a piece of bone coming out of his left thigh about mid way down the thigh. It looked like a pipe because there was no flesh there and nothing below that long bone. The side of that thigh that was left and farther up to the hip looked like hamburger. He wasn't moving and there was no one helping him yet. He was several steps from the woman I knew had to be dead, so the medical person probably went to him. He must have lived because someone got there fast enough to limit the blood gushing out of his left side.
What this says is one has to determine what wounds are most likely based on the event. Think of various events that could happen and come up with the type wounds you would most likely see and what you would do about it. When I heard the bombs went off at a low level, I immediately thought “LEGS, BLEEDING OUT”. I would have grabbed my H&H pressure bandages, gauze, and hit the street.
I saw some people there, but not many, who had cuts around the head, but they weren't life threatening cuts. There have been no reports of internal injuries from the blast.
Small children could have wounds over the length of their body since they are short.
If you have a million medical items, you still need one life saving bag that isn't a huge bag, with the items to keep a body living until that body gets to a hospital. Consider what medical items you have and which would keep a body alive and put those in a bag. I put an EMT label on a light weight black bag and I know that's the one to grab in a life threatening situation. I suppose I could list those items and that might help you consider what to have available fast.
Ping to post 6.
First thing I do when hurt badly is lean over and puke. I can't help it. You eventually expect it. It sucks. Hard.
Self aid and buddy care training is something folks shouldn't sleep through if they have 2 stripes or more.
/johnny
Wow, darlin’. There’s points in there I never would have imagined.
Even CLS training didn’t give us goodies like that.
Think of the basics of life in a body. The heart has to work and an adequate amount of blood has to stay in the body. If either of those fail, the body dies.
Breathing - if there is no breathing, use the jaw thrust/chin lift maneuver to open the airway, reassess for breathing. If the patient is not breathing, give two quick breaths and reassess again. CPR should start here if needed.
Circulation - plug bleeders, all of them. Cut clothing to look for additional bleeding. Start splinting fractures at this point.
Disability - if the patient is unconscious, yell at him/her or use a sternal rub to elicit a response. Note the position of the arms and legs when the patient responds, check the pupils (indicative of brain injury). A dilated pupil will be opposite of the side of the head that is injured. Note- the patient may regain consciousness or lose consciousness very quickly.
Exposure - if you partially disrobed the patient to administer life saving first aid, cover him/her back up.
Obviously, if the patient is screaming and holding on to a stump that used to be a limb, then you can skip the Airway and Breathing part and go directly to Circulation. Continually reassess your treatments to ensure they are effective, and never leave a patient until relieved by competent health care providers or the patient expires.
1 first responder to 1 patient. Don't attempt to jump from patient to patient.
If you are a lay person, do NOT attempt invasive treatments such as IV's or inserting esophageal airways.
Actually, there have been. Some of the ER surgeons gritched about digging nails and .25 ball bearings out of folks.
The worst part of what you posted was something not mentioned.
No woman should ever have to cope with battlefield type injuries.
Call me old fashioned, castigate me. I'll not relent. It's hard enough to cope with the smell of open intestines without thinking about a girl working the field on the wounded.
Kipling's 'Gunga Din' comes to mind.
/johnny
Trained buddies of mine finally found me and dealt with my injuries. Not exactly like I suggested, because they didn't give me a .22, but they did the medically correct thing.
I wound up doing a large part of my early (magic hour) care myself on the side of a mountain, alone but for God and my training.
I didn't have an external injury until they cut in and fixed the 'gutshot deer' thing the surgeon said I had going on with my left side.
2 weeks in ICU. 17 units of blood. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you want to, sometimes you don't.
I'm still here annoying folks and telling my story.
/johnny
In the Boston case, I would do the steps as I posted. My eyes would be evaluating circulation as I approached the patient because this blast was tearing people apart below the waist and bleeding out was going to mean fast death.
I would not go by the book exactly in a case like this. Certainly, when I got to the patient’s body, I would check on breathing and pulse fast. I'm not putting on a neck collar if an artery is bleeding out right then. Nice collar and dead patient and I wouldn't have a collar in my pocket.
The condition of each patient would decide which steps I would take first, considering that breathing and heart beat are essential firsts. If I had to stop arterial bleeding (and that isn't going to happen without an H&H High Pressure bandage), I would do that and not let the patient move. Whoever came to put that person on a stretcher would apply the neck collar before moving the patient.
Sorry, by internal injuries I was speaking of the impact of the blast itself, the concussion of the blast, not scrapnel going into the body.
Not everyone will have med gear for battle injuries.
Keep it simple.
If it’s bleeding, stop it. On a battlefield, this generally means tournacuts or cauterizing. Ain’t pretty, ain’t the best, but can save lives.
If it isn’t breathing, make it. CPR. Chest thump. Ain’t pretty, ain’t the best, but can save lives.
Everything else is minor. Treat for shock by slightly elevating head and feet. Keep the patient warm. Drinking water nearby if conscious.
In all cases, get help to, or help patient to, professional aid ASAP.
/johnny
Bruising behind ear, middle cranial fossa injury
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